Psychology of art

Phantasm: petals on a wet, black bough

by Sean Payne

Catalogue introduction to 'Phantasm: images of the face by George Alamidis, Greg Neville & Greg Wayn'. Lab X Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; 2006

There is a strange double aspect to the human face. On the one hand, it is the most certain, the most concrete of... more There is a strange double aspect to the human face. On the one hand, it is the most certain, the most concrete of visual forms; a form to which our brains give priority above all others. On the other hand, faces have a fragile residence in the mind. Faces are like this; simultaneously concrete and yet often at the edge of perception and account, for which we struggle to find appropriate metaphor.

The faces in Phantasm bridge this apparent contradiction, appearing not as they are but as they occupy the mind, whether in consciousness, in memory, in hallucination, or in the dark places.

High and low spatial frequencies are most useful for drawing.

by Lester Loschky

What perceptual information do artists use to accurately render what they see? To answer this question, we... more What perceptual information do artists use to accurately render what they see? To answer this question, we investigated the utility of low, middle, and high spatial frequency bands for drawing. Untrained artists drew portraits from four spatial frequency bands (unfiltered, low, middle, and high). Raters judged the accuracy of those drawings compared to images of either the same or an unfiltered version of the face. Contrary to predictions based on the useful spatial frequencies for face recognition, which favor middle spatial frequencies (MSFs), the results showed that low spatial frequencies (LSFs) and high spatial frequencies (HSFs) were more useful for drawing, and the unfiltered condition produced the best drawings. Thus, the information most useful for drawing faces is not the same as that for recognizing faces. Specifically, artists may utilize the global configuration information carried in LSFs and the edge and detail information carried in HSFs to render accurate drawings.

Some Things That Pictures Are Good For-An Information Processing Perspective

by Lester Loschky

Our visual experience of the world is extremely limited in scope both spatially and temporally. This is due to extreme... more Our visual experience of the world is extremely limited in scope both spatially and temporally. This is due to extreme restrictions on our visual attention, our region of high resolution within the field of view and our visual short-term memory, as shown by research on visual perception and memory. However, we have developed very efficient ways of dealing with these limitations. One biologically based scheme is to make rapid eye movements around our visual environment several times per second. This allows us to attend to items in our visual environment serially that we could not attend to simultaneously, and allows us to refresh our leaky visual short-term memories at the same time. A second entirely human invention is to make and view pictures. Pictures have a great capacity for allowing us to direct a person's attention to things they might not have noticed. Pictures also allow us the time to carefully explore visual information by attending to detail, that otherwise might have disappeared in our ever-changing world. Likewise, because pictures can hold information in a stable form, we don't have to use our limited visual short-term memories to hold onto their contents. Instead, we have the potential to repeatedly look back at any detail whenever the need arises in order to more deeply process its contents without loss of information due to the image changing. In this way, pictures facilitate our contemplation of visual information. Of course, pictures do not remove the inherent limitations on our visual attention, resolution, and short-term memory, as clearly shown in the pictorial demonstrations contained in this article. However, pictures do extend our abilities to deal with these limitations in ways that greatly enrich our visual experience.

The Anorectic Dance: Towards a New Understanding of Inner-Experience Through Psychotherapeutic Movement

by Joaquim Luís Coimbra

Maria João Padrão and Joaquim Luís Coimbra

A 6-month body-oriented psychotherapeutic intervention project was conducted with a group of seven hospitalized female... more A 6-month body-oriented psychotherapeutic intervention project was conducted with a group of seven hospitalized female patients diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. This intervention worked as a first pilot study integrated into a larger medium-term project, which had as its main goals to collect relevant material on the experiential and semantic levels of the body experience in Anorexia nervosa, as well as on the assessment of the movement characteristics and preferences revealed by the patients. Data collection included movement observation and verbal discourse analysis. The results seem to support some theoretical assumptions and allow the interpretation of empirical findings. On the basis of this study, we propose some considerations and implications for dance/movement therapy intervention with anorectic patients, founded on aesthetic experience and developmental-constructivist perspectives.

Evolutionary and neuropsychological perspectives on art as purposeful

by Louis Hoffman

Cathy Calvert, co-author

Review of the book Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts]. Psychology of... more Review of the book Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts]. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1, 252-254.

A cognitive approach to the earliest art

by Johan De Smedt

Co-authored with Helen De Cruz

This paper takes a cognitive perspective to assess the significance of some Late Palaeolithic artefacts (sculptures... more This paper takes a cognitive perspective to assess the significance of some Late Palaeolithic artefacts (sculptures and engraved objects) for philosophical concepts of art. We examine cognitive capacities that are necessary to produce and recognize objects that are denoted as art. These include the ability to attribute and infer design (design stance), the ability to distinguish between the materiality of an object and its meaning (symbol-mindedness), and an aesthetic sensitivity to some perceptual stimuli. We investigate to what extent these cognitive processes played a role in the production and appreciation of some recently discovered Palaeolithic artefacts.

A cognitive approach to the earliest art

by Helen De Cruz

With Johan De Smedt

This paper takes a cognitive perspective to assess the significance of some Late Palaeolithic artefacts (sculptures... more This paper takes a cognitive perspective to assess the significance of some Late Palaeolithic artefacts (sculptures and engraved objects) for philosophical concepts of art. We examine cognitive capacities that are necessary to produce and recognize objects that are denoted as art. These include the ability to attribute and infer design (design stance), the ability to distinguish between the materiality of an object and its meaning (symbol-mindedness), and an aesthetic sensitivity to some perceptual stimuli. We investigate to what extent these cognitive processes played a role in the production and appreciation of some recently discovered Palaeolithic artefacts.

Bernard Berenson and the Science of Anti-Modernism

by Ian Verstegen

Art Criticism 15 (2001): 9-22

On the Old Saw "I Know Nothing About Art but I Know What I Like"

by Kevin Melchionne

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 68, No. 2, spring 2010.

Argues for a significant role for affective ignorance in aesthetic experience. Argues for a significant role for affective ignorance in aesthetic experience.

A New Problem for Aesthetics

by Kevin Melchionne

Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 9, 2011

The essay introduces readers to the problem of aesthetic unreliability, the variety of ways in which it is difficult... more The essay introduces readers to the problem of aesthetic unreliability, the variety of ways in which it is difficult to grasp our aesthetic experience and the consequent confusion and unreliability of what we take as our taste.

Água Viva: vida mais que meramente teorizada em Clarice Lispector

by Herlon Bezerra

BEZERRA, Herlon Alves. Água Viva: vida mais que meramente teorizada em Clarice Lispector. Revista de Gestalt (Instituto Sedes Sapientiae). São Paulo, n. 11, p. 55-62, 2002.

Este livre-escrito se pretende uma aproximação estética ao texto "Água Viva", de Clarice Lispector. Em tal... more Este livre-escrito se pretende uma aproximação estética ao texto "Água Viva", de Clarice Lispector. Em tal aproximação busca-se uma experiência imediata, explicitante do princípio, já presente nas teorizações das psicoterapias de fundamentação fenomenológico-existencial, segundo o qual não encontram-se no cultivo das capacidades humanas de reflexão as possibilidades de atualização das potencialidades humanas de auto-construção e auto-superação.

Toward an Integrative Approach of Cognitive Neuroscientific and Evolutionary Psychological Studies of Art

by Helen De Cruz

Co-authored with Johan De Smedt, published in Evolutionary Psychology, 2010, vol. 8, 695-719.

This paper examines explanations for human artistic behavior in two reductionist research programs, cognitive... more This paper examines explanations for human artistic behavior in two reductionist research programs, cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Despite their different methodological outlooks, both approaches converge on an explanation of art
production and appreciation as byproducts of normal perceptual and motivational cognitive skills that evolved in response to problems originally not related to art, such as the discrimination of salient visual stimuli and speech sounds. The explanatory power of this reductionist framework does not obviate the need for higher-level accounts of art from the humanities, such as aesthetics, art history or anthropology of art.